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Emma sinks back, pressing her hands to her eyes.
“I don’t care about the torch, Tom—at least not in the way you explain it. What disturbs me is the lies. How am I ever supposed to trust you again?”
His eyes narrow, making him look even more stricken. “Please tell me this isn’t a deal breaker, Emma.”
She thinks suddenly of what Eric said today about the goes and gones. And she realizes she doesn’t want to be gone from Tom. For all her doubts during the past days, certain truths about him have crystallized. He loves her passionately. He always has her back. And he’s a good person, the kind of guy who wants to be there for his difficult stepdaughter, who forgoes an important night with clients to help an injured teenager, who’s determined to help his staff deal with the death of a coworker. She still loves him—she knew that last night as she desperately tried to warn him, as she imagined him hurt or even dead—and she wants to try to save her marriage.
There’s something else Emma realizes. If she’s going to make it work, she’s going to have to accept the fact that Tom, for all his superpowers, is human. After her disastrous first marriage, she went hunting for perfection, but there’s no such thing.
“No, it’s not a deal breaker, Tom,” she says softly. “Not at this point anyway. But I need to explain why what you did was wrong, and make you understand it.”
“I’m listening.”
“As far as I’m concerned, there’s no need for you to share every thought and moment of your life with me,” she begins. “You didn’t tell me initially about the embezzlement and that’s okay. It was a private work situation for you, andyou had to keep it under wraps. You didn’t tell me you had Diana’s scarf in the closet, and that’s okay, too. You loved her and you’re entitled to keep your grief about her private.
“I don’t even mind that you didn’t tell me when we first started dating that you’d had your eye on me earlier. We all hold back when we meet someone new—I mean, I certainly didn’t tell you that I googled the hell out of you. But once I asked you about it, and there was so much at stake, you needed to come clean.”
“I get what you’re saying, I do.”
“And it can’t happen again. It doesn’t matter if you think telling me something will unsettle or upset me. I’m not some fragile creature.”
“I hear you, Emma. I really do. And you have my word I won’t make a mistake like that again.”
Wearily, Tom pushes back from the table, rises, and returns with two glasses and a bottle of sparkling water.
“And you’re right,” he says, lowering himself back in his chair. “I probably have treated you with kid gloves at times, starting from the very beginning. I could see how much you were suffering, how much Derrick’s death had devastated you.”
Emma’s breath catches as he utters those words.Tom’s not the only one who’s lied, is he?
From the moment they met, she’s allowed him to fill in the blanks about what she was going through. Though she’s dropped hints to him that her marriage to Derrick wasn’t working, Tom has no idea the depths of it.
It’s time to finally come clean with him.
“Now there’s somethingIneed to confess—about myfirst marriage. Something I’ve never had the guts to share with you before.”
“Please,” he says.
Emma clears her throat. It will be hard, but she’s pretty sure Tom will be understanding.
And then? Will they be okay? The nearly two years they’ve been together have been loving, passionate, fun, and incredibly fulfilling, and Tom has never given her any reason to doubt his love or fidelity. It seems to be, overall at least, a pretty solid foundation, what a good marriage should look like.
She knows from her work that you can’t really predict the future, no matter how many signs you read, but Emma thinks they have a chance.
